The familiar spiritual realm.
The familiar clash of wills.
Uchiha Kagami stepped out from what looked suspiciously like a rooftop café inside the mindscape, soda can in hand. He blinked at the scene in front of him, montarily wondering if he'd sohow gotten drunk on cola.
Across the void, the Sage of Six Paths floated calmly.
Sa trick as before.
Without warning, he dropped every layer of spiritual defense around himself.
But this ti, Akio wasn't buying it.
Just as Akio's crushing psychic pressure was about to slam into the completely unguarded Sage, the old man sighed, tapped his staff against the ground, and the white robe marked with six crimson tomoe fluttered as his barrier snapped back into place.
Akio grinned.
"Oh, I thought you were fearless. Go on, drop the shield. That stunt might work once, but fool twice? What do you take for?"
He folded his arms.
"And don't pretend the afterlife collapsing would scare . The stronger the soul, the longer it lasts, right? Worst case, we both lose sothing. Mutually assured destruction."
The Sage was silent for a long mont.
"You may keep Hashirama Senju's soul."
Akio smiled, relief flickering beneath it.
Compromise was good. If this escalated into a full-scale spiritual war, countless souls might be wiped out and killing the Sage would leave Akio's own spirit damaged. He didn't have ti for recovery. Two high-level fugitives were still at large.
"Just Hashirama?" Akio shook his head. "If that's all I wanted, I wouldn't have dragged you in with him."
Another long silence.
Finally, the Sage lowered his feet to the ground and stood upright.
"Uzumaki Akio. Let tell you a story."
Akio waved him off.
"How about a joke instead? If it's funny enough, maybe I'll let you go."
The Sage ignored him.
"A thousand years ago, a celestial maiden descended from beyond the stars"
Akio snorted.
"You an your mother. She ate the fruit of the Divine Tree, cast the Infinite Tsukuyomi, tried to rewrite the world, and you and your brother sealed her inside the moon. I know the outline."
He tilted his head.
"By the way, nice engineering on that moon. Stable orbit for a millennium? Impressive. Teach so ti, we could make it a two-moon skyline."
The Sage looked at him evenly.
"That seal cannot fail."
Akio blinked.
"…Wait. The afterlife exists to draw energy to maintain the lunar seal?"
"If the seal collapses," the Sage replied, "my mother will be released. Though I divided the Ten-Tails' chakra into the tailed beasts, she is immortal. Even if only her husk awakens, she can reclaim her power. You are not yet capable of sealing her, not in her weakened state, and certainly not at full strength."
Akio considered that.
He had enough witness points stockpiled to max out his sealing techniques. He was… curious.
"That's not the point," the Sage continued. "I have long suspected my mother's descent into tyranny was not natural. After centuries of investigation, I am nearly certain she was influenced, manipulated by soone."
Akio frowned.
Fragnts of half-rembered lore surfaced. There had always been inconsistencies in how her transformation was portrayed in various accounts.
The Sage continued.
"In the records of ancient kingdoms, every critical event surrounding her change shares one common presence."
Akio muttered to himself.
"There was sothing about a foreign kingdom… and a handmaiden who died…"
The Sage's eyes sharpened.
"You know of that?"
Akio looked up slowly.
"The handmaiden. Her na was Aino, wasn't it?"
The Sage nodded.
"Her death marked the turning point."
Akio felt sothing click into place and then sothing much worse.
Teuchi's wife.
Aino.
The sa na.
"…You're telling this all loops back to Otsutsuki Teuchi?" he murmured.
The Sage struck his staff lightly against the ground.
"If you had not sent your other self into the past, none of this would have happened."
Akio froze.
The spiritual pressure he had been maintaining faltered for a fraction of a second.
"Other… self?"
His thoughts spiraled.
Teuchi.
Present at every pivotal mont in Kaguya's descent.
Manipulating history for witness points.
"…That explains it," Akio whispered. "But how are there two of ?"
The Sage answered calmly.
"He traversed ti twice. The distortions may have caused a divergence. Or perhaps it is tied to the anomaly that grants you your strength. Do not tell you reached this level through training alone."
Akio exhaled.
"You're right. It was pure hard work."
The Sage stared at him.
Silence filled the mindscape.
Akio began assembling the pieces.
Teuchi had first traveled back decades. Then later prevented Akio, his past self from doing the sa. Two temporal displacents. A fracture.
One version remained.
Another was thrown back a thousand years.
Two Akios.
He slowly accepted it.
"If he ant harm, I'd have been dead long ago. When I was weaker, eliminating would've been effortless."
His personality was his own. He knew it better than anyone. Whatever the other version had experienced, he wouldn't beco so mustache-twirling villain.
At worst? A little opportunistic.
And Aino… likely Kaguya's handmaiden, saved and carried forward through ti.
Akio narrowed his eyes.
"When he fought you before, he wasn't that strong. Maybe he found another thod to gain witness points through others. And since points can't be duplicated… he shouldn't be stronger than now."
Then another thought struck him.
"Sara's bloodline. That can't be fabricated. If he went back a thousand years…"
The Sage nodded.
"The royal line of the ancient desert kingdom are his descendants. The girl Sara is the final heir."
Akio felt an odd sense of relief.
He'd raised her all these years. Bloodline or not, she was his daughter.
That wasn't changing.
Which left one final, absurd irritation.
He folded his arms and looked skyward.
"Honestly. You go back a thousand years and don't even bother becoming the Sage's father? You just run off with the celestial handmaiden?"
He clicked his tongue.
"Embarrassing."
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